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ABSTRACT
This methodological study analyses the merits of adopting an ambulatory ‘hike-along’ approach to explore the mobile experiences of women during serious leisure pursuits such as Munro-bagging – climbing Scotland’s 3,000 feet high mountains. By walking with participants as they ascended their chosen routes, rather than relying on sedentary, post-hoc interviews, we were able to observe the transient, shifting natures of their pastime, the embodied relationships between self and landscape, previously overlooked moments of ‘in-between-ness’, liminalities between mobility and immobility, and the ways in which women live their experiences into being, intertwining their self-concepts with emerging understandings of their environment. The ‘nowness’ of our methodology captured the inseparability of actor, (inter)action, self, movement, and temporospatial and sociocultural contexts. Moreover, the inherent mobility of our approach brought a congruence with the subject matter, participants, settings and phenomena of study, which helped to separate women’s adventure identities from the androcentricity permeating the canonical literature on walking. We therefore recommend broader adoption of ‘hike-alongs’ within similar ethnographic studies of serious leisure.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David M Brown
Dr David M Brown is a PhD Programme Leader at Northumbria University. His research interests include qualitative methodologies, ethnographies, space/place/mobilities, relationship marketing, and the pedagogical use of simulation games. Prior to entering academia, he accrued 18 years’ industrial experience in sales and marketing management roles. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Sharon Wilson
Dr Sharon Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism & Events at Northumbria University. Her research interests focus on human mobilities, cultural tourism, business innovation and the creative industries, emotional geographies, embodiment theory, transport ontologies, post-humanism and creative thinking in innovation, sensory mobilities and slow travel. With engagement with the ‘new mobilities paradigm’, her qualitative work also welcomes plurality and innovation in research episteme to contribute to the evolution of creative methodological practices.
Tom Mordue
Prof Tom Mordue is Professor of Tourism and Head of the Enterprise, Innovation and Strategy Department at Northumbria University. His major research interests are tourism development and management, economic restructuring, cultural development, ‘urban renaissance’, sustainable regional development, cultural industries and social theory. Tom holds a PhD in Human Geography from Durham University, and prior to his academic career he worked for British Airways, starting and developing very profitable tour operations in several different countries.